Liveblogging and the back channel move to Twitter

One of the more interesting things that happened at the Online Community Business Forum last week didn’t happen during a particular session, but rather, happened to several participants as the sessions of the first day went on. This is a real shift in behavior for these particular participants, as I generally see them using IRC as a back channel, and a few of them live blogging. Twitter was serving both purposes at the OCBF.

Both the conference back channel as well as the live-blogging mostly shifted to Twitter. You can check out the end result of the “Live Tweeting” here: http://twemes.com/ocbf2008

The main benefit I saw of using Twitter during the sessions was that it allowed (at least in a small way) lots of participants who weren’t at the conference to participate.

The main downside is that it’s really hard to pay attention, be present, and full process a conversation while cramming thoughts in to 140 characters per tweet.

In particular, Shara Karasic of Work.com did an awesome job of live tweeting (wow – did I just write live tweeting?) the event.

Bill Johnston - Founder, Structure3C. Former Head of Community at Dell & Autodesk.
Mobile: (415) 233-6914
Twitter: @billjohnston
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/billj
In a sentence: Seasoned online community and social media executive and advisor with over 15 years experience developing large scale online communities, social media initiatives and successful online product strategies.